Correspondence sent to SES Regarding Shark Patrol Plane Protocol

To all readers, welcome. If any of you have been keeping in touch with our socials, you would be aware that we have been pursuing a partnership with the state fixed-wing shark patrol plane which operates daily on a seasonal basis from November to April. The plane can be seen flying back and forth along the Adelaide metropolitan coastline and Southern Fleurieu Peninsula, generally between the hours of 10:30am and 7pm between Outer Harbor and the Murray Mouth.

The fixed-wing service is a government funded proposal managed by the SES at a cost of approximately $460,000. A C-172 (Cessna) aircraft is used for the patrols and features an onboard crew who are trained to locate and identify sharks to the best of their ability from the aerial vantage point of the plane. When a shark is located, the crew immediately relay the information back to South Australia Police who then decide the next course of action suitable for the management of public safety.

SAPOL will then send a report to PIRSA and, on inconsistent occasions, they may also publish a post on their "X" News feed to spread public awareness of the threat. PIRSA will eventually add the shark sighting to their "Shark Sightings Log". The timing of these updates is unpredictable in nature and are publicised on this platform, hours, or even weeks later making this method extremely unreliable for timely and potentially lifesaving correspondence to the population. Moreover, aside from delay times and inconsistencies behind reporting, publicly released information from both parties regarding shark sightings has been observed lacking insightful details including absent information on the approximate shark size and species. This type of data can help the community make informed decisions on how to independently handle the matter and mitigate potential fear and/or confusion.

Our objective is to retrieve live shark sighting information directly from the crew onboard the patrol plane to reduce report delay times and add greater transparency for published reports for the public's peace of mind. As the demand for Shark Watch shark alerts began to peak in 2016 and 2017, Shark Watch administrator, Anton, began to notice these several issues with the standard of public correspondence mentioned above. Our followers also began to associate the plane with Shark Watch. A large portion of site users began messaging the Shark Watch page about live sightings made by the patrol plane. In these instances, questions were raised which site administrator, Anton, had no answer for due to the high degree of confidentiality that the fixed-wing service operates under.

In 2021, Shark Watch released a petition to have these flaws rectified. Anton has reached out to the operations manager at the SES in resolving the issue by potentially forming a partnership, but this has been met with no avail. The petition is linked to this post and allows our users to freely and easily state their concerns and show their support to help this new movement gain traction.

On February 16, Shark Watch, again, sent correspondence to the operations manager at the SES pushing for change and mentioning the concerns stated above. Eight days later, we are still without a response and will be actively pursuing the matter with more vigour prior to their annual review that Anton is seeking to be a part of in one way or the other. To fuel the change, jump behind our petition linked to this post which has an impressive 600 signatures and counting! Alternatively, we encourage our members to peacefully and respectfully contact those in management of the fixed-wing service in voicing your own concerns to them.

Petition Link: https://www.change.org/p/state-emergency-service-sa-get-the-shark-patrol-plane-onboard-with-shark-watch

A view of the underbody of the state fixed-wing aerial shark patrol plane captured in 2018 by one of our followers.